The Flaming Lips are one of a few bands who have managed to stay both relevant and interesting over a career that has spanned nearly four decades. They found mainstream success with 1999’s The Soft Bulletin – voted NME’s album of the year – followed by 2002’s equally brilliant Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Since then, they’ve won three Grammys and, in 2018, an award for their song Tomorrow Is written – very appropriately – for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical.
And that’s exactly the thing about the Flaming Lips. Even diehard fans can’t predict what in the name of Wayne Coyne’s beard they’re going to do next. Who else would have covered the whole of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper and curated a reworking of the Stone Roses’s debut LP? Or got around the whole Covid social distancing thing by getting the audience to stand in their own personal inflatable plastic bubbles? (Don’t ask what happened if you needed the toilet.)
